With relentless determination, Guatemala deposited this Thursday (10.03.2022/131/XNUMX) its accession to the Revised Kyoto Convention, the main instrument for facilitating customs trade of the World Customs Organization (WCO), becoming the XNUMXst member.
In this way, Guatemala completes its efforts as a country towards the ratification and implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, in its quest to improve economic competitiveness.
The announcement to the press was made at a conference broadcast virtually from the WCO headquarters in Brussels, where the Deputy Secretary General of the WCO, Ricardo Treviño, was accompanied by the Superintendent of Tax Administration of Guatemala (SAT-G), Marco Livio Díaz Reyes, in the presence of the Ambassador of the Republic of Guatemala to the Kingdom of Belgium, José Gabriel Lambour Peñalonzo, and the Superintendent of Customs of Guatemala, Werner Ovalle.
Before the audience, the Deputy Secretary General Treviño He welcomed with pride and satisfaction the deposit of the instrument for Guatemala to accede to the Revised Kyoto Convention. “It is the flagship instrument of the WCO, which today has 131 members,” he said. He also highlighted that it is an instrument that provides the best standards and recommended practices for customs procedures in order to facilitate the flow of legal trade.
Referring to the importance of the Central American country's progress, he pointed out that "the deposit of the instrument of accession provides certainty to economic operators seeking to carry out cross-border trade operations with Guatemala."
Meanwhile, Ambassador José Gabriel Lambour Peñalonzo He highlighted the importance of the commitment to “attract investments and promote international trade in the short, medium and long term in Guatemala.”
Werner Ovalle, Guatemalan Customs Superintendent and WCO Regional Vice President for the Americas and the Caribbean, stressed the importance of this instrument for Customs and the trade community. “It is the highest expression of trade facilitation in customs terms of the WCO,” he said.
He also stressed that the agreement commits the contracting parties to transparency and predictability in the actions carried out by Customs, to the standardization and simplification of processes and to simplified procedures.
With this approach, "Guatemala is positioned as the first country in Central America to have the Revised Kyoto Convention and the eighth in the Americas and the Caribbean region," Ovalle said.
At this point, he stressed that the Central American country in charge of the WCO Vice Presidency for the Americas and the Caribbean region promotes the adoption of international agreements with the aim of complying with best practices and encouraged countries to advance in the adoption of technologies, as well as in the simplification of processes, to position modern customs administration.
El Superintendent Mario Livio He said, in this regard, that "Guatemala now has global standards to operate with greater agility and competitiveness."
The Revised Kyoto Convention was developed by the World Customs Organization and entered into force on February 3, 2006. By 2022, the convention already has 131 contracting parties, of which Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Canada, the United States, Guatemala, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic are the eight member countries in the region.
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